Seems I’m not so much untethered as unhinged

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MiniMediaGuy gets egg on face — again!

 

With such pride and fanfare I announced on Dec 10 that I had severed my land connection to broadband in favor of the Verizon EV-DO service that dials into some sort of cellular broadband service. I was excited because I paid only the sales tax on four $170 modems that I distributed to my family. I thought — erroneously — that all four modems were activated by a single $59.95 monthly charge. That is what I had been paying for Comcast. So it seemed like a great deal to get four completely mobile broadband connections for the same price.

 

Indeed it would have been a great deal — had it been true. But apparently each of those four EV-DO lines carried a $59.95 charge. That would have given me family broadband for $240 a month — not such a deal.

 

Fortunately I discovered my error a day ago and was able to take back all four devices and cancel the service within the 30-day cooling off period.

I am not the sharpest of consumers as this makes clear. But I’m pretty sure that I asked, repeatedly, whether all four modems were covered by the same $59.95 charge. Perhaps my salesperson thought I was asking whether the charge varied from device to device. But I think I pretty clearly said that I intended to disconnect my cable modem and hand out EV-DOs to my family. Was the sales guy not listening or not thinking or not caring?

I am grateful for Verizon’s 30 day return policy. It allowed me the time to undue a hasty purchase. That is the lesson to me. I didn’t spend much more time on this decision than I would have spent deciding whether or not to have whipped cream on my mocha. I can’t afford to be so careless with recurring monthly expenses.